Your Eyes Betray What Burns Inside You
by aphytick
Summary: A slight retelling of Nick and Gatsby's final meeting. Some lines taken directly from the novel. Title from I Love You by Woodkid.


A/N I was disgusted by the recent Baz Luhrmann adaptation and I consider it a complete bastardisation of the novel, but hey, it made writing this a lot easier. I apologise for characterisation.

* * *

My pyjama shirt clung damply to my skin. I rid myself of it, settling back on to my bed with a sense of unease. Sleep, unsurprisingly, eluded me as the memories of the previous evening raced through my mind, hot and confused. I could picture the accident, although I had not been there, could see Gatsby staring blindly at the road before grabbing the emergency break and driving on, as though they had merely hit a stray dog. Nothing to be done, it would not be missed. I wanted to curse them both for being so reckless, but worry gnawed at my stomach and made me feel nothing but nausea. I tried again to fall asleep, gulping down cold tea to sooth my nerves, but to no avail.

I was thankful for the sound of tires on gravel. It was still dark outside, the blinking clock on my bedside table telling me it was a little while before dawn, but I dressed frantically and exited my own house, crossing my now ragged lawn and walking briskly to Gatsby's front door. I raised a hand to knock but it hung limply in the air when I saw him bracing himself against the end table in his hall. His shoulders seemed to be weighing him down, and his lightly oiled hair fell across his forehead. He didn't even raise his head to look at me.

"Nothing happened." He told me, although I had not asked, in a voice that was small, and unusually strained. "I waited, and at about four o'clock she came to the window and stood there for a minute and then turned out the light."  
I didn't know what to say to him. I coughed weakly, and he looked at me then, as if he expected me to have an appropriate response. When I didn't continue, he pushed himself off the table and made a display of straightening his jacket, fingers pulling a little too hard on the hem. My own fingers twitched slightly, meticulousness aching to brush the strands of hair away from his face. I knew I had something to tell him, but in that moment I could only focus on the dim light streaming in from the porch to bounce across the curves of the fabric of his suit. A question struggled to reach my ears.  
I blinked. "What?" I replied, dumbly.  
"Would you stay a while?" He repeated. "It's just that I don't think I'll be able to sleep. At any rate, you look more alert than I feel and I could use the company. I wouldn't wish to put you at any inconvenience, however…" he trailed off, hand lazily drawing a circle in the air in front of him. The gesture indicated that he expected a response.  
"No, no. I mean, yes, I'll stay, if only for a while. I doubt I'll be able to drift off. Anyhow, I can sleep on the train if needs be."  
"You still plan to work despite the…unpleasantness of this afternoon?"  
"I plan to work _because _of it. Any distraction would be welcome. " I shut the door behind me and stepped further in to the hall. Gatsby merely nodded before turning to switch the light on.  
" I'm afraid I might not be much use in the way of entertainment, old sport. I know you enjoyed the odd party of mine."

I hadn't enjoyed them, in fact. They had enchanted me once, but I still failed to understand them. The truth of the matter was that I had enjoyed the host a great deal more than the party itself. Still, I made a non-committal sound in the back of my throat, which seemed to satisfy a question he hadn't asked. He offered me a drink which I promptly and politely refused. I accepted the offer of a cigarette, only for him to pat his breast pocket lightly before frowning.  
"It seems I've lost my hosting touch, old sport." He smiled apologetically at me, a gesture which I readily returned.  
I had seen his house in all its splendour many times by this point, yet it seemed almost desolate that night. There were no guests in the upstair rooms, no swimming party idly shivering by the back door. Jonquils drooped on every surface and the very floorboards seemed to creak with dejection under our footsteps. Even Gatsby seemed set apart from this; startlingly, I could see clearly that he did not belong. I felt that he knew this too as he gazed upon his belongs with a lack of recognition or desire. It was due to my watching him that I stubbed my toe on a dog-eared carpet and fell with much clamour and dramatics on to the keys on an open piano.  
I was quick to apologise, although I knew that I had caused no disturbance. I looked to Gatsby to apologise once more, and found that he had begun to laugh. Not the carefully practiced chuckle I had seen him administer to many individuals during the course of his parties, nor the unsure huff that he granted Daisy, but a genuine, bellowing laugh that drew the skin around his eyes attractively tight. Something told me that it had been a great deal of time since he laughed like this, and I found myself glad to be the cause. He ran a hand over his face, before clapping it on my shoulder.

"And to think of all the money I spent on entertainment when I had you right next door!"  
I was stunned to find myself laughing along with him. To an outsider we must have looked like young boys, but it didn't matter. The rest of them be damned, I was grateful for the rare moments I spent with him like this, when the husk of his envisioned persona slipped from off his shoulders. I believe I was the only person who ever got to see him like this. Gatsby wiped a tear from the corner of his eye before reminding me that we were on a hunt. We found two cigarettes, and we both were relieved to be able to sit for a little while.

There was a bit of bother with the lighter, and a quick check under the small outdoor lamp told me that I was out of fuel. Gatsby said my name quietly, before plucking the cigarette from my fingers and placing it between my lips. Leaning forward, he cupped his hands around my jaw and placed the tips of the cigarettes against each other, pursing his lips and breathing for a moment until both were alight. I swallowed, opening my mouth to thank him before I suddenly remembered what it was I came to say.

"You ought to go away. It's pretty certain they'll trace your car." He frowned at me and I was forced to look away.  
"Go away _now, _old sport?"  
"Go to Atlantic City for a week, or up to Montreal." Gatsby shook his head briskly, taking a drag of his cigarette. I noticed faintly that his hand was not as sure as it usually was.  
"I can't, you see. Not currently, there's too much to consider." By that, I knew he was talking about Daisy. Despite the afternoon's events, a part of him still believed that she would leave Tom and travel back to Louisville with him. I knew this was not even a possibility, and I'm sure he did too for the most part, but I could not bear to dash what little hope he had left. We sat in silence for a little while, until he tapped the table directly in front of me.

"What do you think of me, anyhow?" He looked directly at me with that way he had; his words implied that it was a casual question, no harm meant but his eyes told me that a great deal hung on the strings of my answer. I decided to commit to it.  
"Honestly, sometimes I don't know what to make of you." I gestured to him with my free hand. My tendency for hyperbole would not let me skimp on the reply. "This Gatsby is different from the one I usually see. There is the Gatsby I see with Wolfsheim – secretive, elusive." I paused, recalling with scorn the rumours that had circulated around his parties. "_Sinister_. There is the Gatsby I see with his guests – guarded, anxious and alone. The third Gatsby is the one I see with Tom." I ignored his minuscule wince. If I did not say this now, there was a chance I would never be able to again. "I think I like this Gatsby the least. He is aggressive, vulgar and harsh. Very unlike that Gatsby I see with Daisy."  
He took another drag. "And what is that Gatsby like, old sport?"  
I considered this for a moment. I had intended to talk about the brief glimpses of hope he showed when with Daisy, or of how it pained me to see him within striking distance of an unattainable dream. I could have said admirable, intense, or hopeful.  
Instead, I told him "false". I followed with "naïve" and rounded off the list of bullet adjectives with "hope_less_".

He pulled back, fixing me with a questioning stare. I half suspected he was angry with me. At this point, I half didn't care.  
"And what do you make of this Gatsby."  
"What Gatsby?"  
"The Gatsby I am with you."  
He stood, the guttural sound of his chair scraping against the stone sharp in the thickness of the early dawn. I raised my head to look at him, running my tongue over my bottom lip in thought.  
"Radiant" was the first word that came to mind, no doubt supplied by the light of the moon spilling over his pink rag of a suit. I felt the toe of his brogue nudge mine.  
"Eager" was the second, as I thought of the countless day trips he had invited me on. I knew now that all of it was for Daisy's sake, still, a small part of me liked to fool itself in to thinking that he genuinely enjoyed my company. He placed one hand on the neck of the chair behind me, and the other on the arm of it.  
I fumbled for a third word as his face drew up to mine, instead thinking once again about the current untidiness of his hair.  
"Great_._" I breathed, and in that moment I meant it. Here he stood before me, the great Gatsby, a man who represented everything for which I had perfected a severe distaste for; a product of his own means and values, or lack thereof – and yet I considered him _great_.  
He repeated it after me, one, twice, and then a third time as though the word were in another language to him and as such, unfamiliar before smiling down at me and nodding.  
I didn't get a chance to explain my choices before he kissed me.

Kissing Gatsby was not how I imagined it, when I had allowed myself to do so. I had thought it would have been cool and crisp, if mouths could manage such things, yet the reality was starkly different. I could taste the cigarette smoke that coated his tongue, the gin from earlier and the brief tang of the mint julep. I wanted to pull back and find my way across my lawn, yet I could feel my fingers tightening around the lapels of his suit, noting without much surprise that it felt quite similar to how it looked. He kissed like a young boy, which again came as a surprise to me. I wondered if he had saved himself for Daisy all those years – I suspected that he had. I allowed my mind to romp no further as he pressed me back in to the chair. His mouth left mine and for a blind moment I thought that he had reconsidered, but this panic dulled as I felt his lips against my neck. If I willed it, I knew I could shove him off without much fuss. If I _had_ willed it, that is. Instead, I used this opportunity to draw him closer, and worked a hand up to his forehead where I fixed the strands of hair that had been worrying me all evening.

Our cigarettes burned happily in a dusty ashtray, only disturbed by my leg jolting the table as Gatsby drew a small patch of skin between his teeth. Bizarrely, my first reaction was to apologise rather than to scold, and I started as I felt him chuckle against my Adam's apple.  
"You would think the ashtray was laying on the ground in a thousand pieces, old sport."  
"Continue this way, and it very well might be."  
He drew back from me, his eyes alarmingly dark.  
"I apologise, I assumed-" it was my turn to laugh at him.  
"You assumed right, Jay." His name felt odd in my mouth, but not out of place. This seemed to please him and so I said it again for good measure.  
He nodded, before drawing me out of the chair by my forearm. As we walked the length of the hall and the height of the stairs to his bedroom, he turned his head to me and said "you should come for a dip with me once it gets light out, old sport. You know, I've never used that pool all summer?"

* * *

A brief look at the clock on the nightstand told me that I had already missed my third train. I noted, none too bitterly, that Gatsby was once again leafing through the book he kept full of clippings about Daisy. The time for discussion had long passed, and the realisation that I had allowed myself to fall in to foolishness was dawning upon me with every passing second. I fussed with my tie, deliberately doing the knot wrong several times so as to give myself an excuse to waste more time in his bed. I didn't want to go to the city. I wasn't worth a decent stroke of work, but it was more than that – I didn't want to leave Gatsby. However, I couldn't put off leaving any longer, and once I'd correctly knotted my tie and slipped on my waistcoat and jacket, I turned to him. Once again, he didn't even raise his head to look at me.

I swallowed and opened my mouth dumbly, before saying "I'll call you up."  
"Do, old sport." He replied, but something in his tone told me he was paying me the minimal amount of attention.  
"I'll call you about noon." I made to turn out the door, before I was stopped by my own name. Gatsby looked as though he was choosing carefully between several things he could say, but finally he settled on a question about whether or not Daisy would call him too. I assured him that she would, although I believed it even less than he did. He nodded.  
"Well, good-bye."  
I turned to leave again before I remembered something else that I had been meaning to tell him. I strode briskly over to his side of the bed, and pressed my lips against his temple. I drew his face up to mine, searching for some attention in his eyes that wasn't held by my cousin.  
"They're a rotten crowd." I whispered, hoping my voice would carry the meaning of my words. "You're worth the whole damn bunch put together." He didn't seem to understand at first, but slowly his mouth spread in to an ecstatic smile, and he thanked me as he kissed me one final time. Now, looking back after all these years, I wonder if the following events hadn't occurred would I have ever gotten the chance to show him what those words truly meant. I told him that he couldn't repeat the past once, and I had meant it, but there was always the pressing possibilities and potential of the future, and I could have been a part of that, had he let me. Still, it was never my place to interfere with Gatsby's dream. I had been branded an outsider once, and I had to be content with that. As I brushed his hair once more from his face, I thanked him for his hospitality.  
"Good-bye." I told him, unaware that it truly was. "I enjoyed breakfast, Gatsby."


End file.
